Page 33 of Bleeding Outside the Lines

Expand.

Contract.

The red fades to black, all the anger that’s built up over the last few weeks comes to a head, clouding my vision and my thoughts.

A strong hand grabs my arm, bringing the world back into focus.

The room is painted red, I don’t remember it, but the carnage is palpable. Cranston’s blood coats every surface of the room, the floor is slick beneath my feet. What’s left of him is unrecognizable as it falls unceremoniously to the floor, a mess of muscle and flesh. I’m not a chef like Ruby, slicing and dicing. I’m a fucking butcher.

Dropping the knife, I look at Nate. He nods and I walk up the stairs to my office, leaving him to do what he does best.

Cleaning up my messes.

twenty-four

The bodies that layon either side of me are still warm. She’s in a tank and panties, he’s in boxers. I don’t know where her blood ends and his begins. It’s a blanket tucked around the three of us. A warm cocoon of death.

Tears slide down my cheeks, diluting the blood that stains them. Crying is as unfamiliar to me as the people I lay between. But the tears keep falling; I can’t make them stop.

Soulless Ruby. You are supposed to be soulless.

I rub my hand to my chest, trying to ease the pressure threatening to crush me. It’s like someone is sitting on top of me, and I imagine it’s the ghost of eight-year-old me coming to witness what I should have done eighteen years ago.

This would not have been an issue before. Before him. Before Cassius, I would have pirouetted through the puddles of blood and used their intestines in a private ribbon twirl routine. But instead, I lay here broken, weak.

Fuck him.

Fuck him for all of this. This is all his fault. How can one person break you and put you back together? Is it possible to be the torturer and the savior?

I slip out of the bed. I do not kiss them. This kill was not Ruby’s. This kill was for eight-year-old Ember and her baby sister staring at her through the bars of her crib.

“I’m not sorry,” I tell her. “I’m only sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

In the hallway, an orange tabby cat chews on a woman’s bare scalp. It pauses to look at me as I step over the woman’s body. She had tried to run. They always try to run. The scalping was a pure accident. I have never done that before, but when she ran, I grabbed her by the hair and one thing led to another and well, here we are.

Red paw prints lead me down the hall, back to the kitchen and living room. A dozen dead eyes look up at me from the floor, their bodies surrounded by filth. Some things never change. Pools of blood spread, congealing around trash and cat feces. It blooms like spring flowers on the bread of a moldy sandwich on the counter. Next to it lays a bent spoon.

Cries carry from the back bedroom. Will she survive this? Will the baby be forced to live with the effects of this life until this point? She looked small in her crib, but I don’t really know babies, so maybe that’s the size she’s supposed to be? I do know that I can’t stay. I can’t help her any more than this.

I hope that eight-year-old me is proud, that she sees this as a triumph. As a way to balance the scales. I hope that hunger pains no longer haunt her. Nor the fear of strangers in her home. I hope she’s healthy and normal.

Fucking normal.

This is so far from fucking normal. I am so far from fucking normal. Fuck eight-year-old me. She’s a little wimp. She was so fucking useless. Nobody loved her. Nobody cared whathappened to her, she didn’t even care what happened to herself. And she deserved it. All of it. The neglect, the pain, because she was weak.

Closing the door, I take my phone out of my boot and call Rowan.

“Get CPS here now. The baby is crying.”

“Got it Rubes, you okay?”

I don’t know how to answer her, my world is fuzzy. Bleeding over my edges. Pooling outside my comfort zone.

All I can do is hang up. I’m not okay. Nothing is okay, and a single face is my tipping point.

Cassius.

Getting on my bike, I ride into the night.

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